


Does that ham hung up in the butcher's window think that it can fly?

by FishLeather



Category: Sherlock (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Creature John Watson, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dark John Watson, Djinni & Genies, Episode: s02e20 What Is and What Should Never Be, Gen, Post-Episode: s02e02 The Hounds of Baskerville, Psychological Horror, Reichenbach Theory, Whump, i will add more tags so help me god, non-human moral framework
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29971905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FishLeather/pseuds/FishLeather
Summary: Sherlock's life has taken a sudden turn for the better, but some things are just too good to be true.Based on the SPN episode "What Is and What Should Never Be" (s2e20), see SPN wiki for detailsComplete fic, updates on Wednesdays.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Comments: 2





	1. Alfred Eisenstaedt would be proud

Sherlock never thought of his life as a fairy-tale. Neither did John. In fact, the man took it upon himself to keep Sherlock's life grounded. John would remind him to be careful and take care of himself. But also to wash the dishes, bin the biohazards, and be polite.

Sherlock ignored those instructions, but appreciated the effort. That was how their friendship worked. John handled boring necessities, and Sherlock kept life interesting for the both of them. Sherlock broke things, John fixed them.

John wore long-sleeved jumpers and wrapped himself in layers, and owned a pot of tattoo concealer. He also had a gunshot wound, though Sherlock hadn't had a chance to inspect it yet. He had a feeling John would let him see it if he'd asked, but given that they were living together, there was no rush.

Life was comfortable, but not perfect. Sherlock made countless mistakes that made John shout at him. The shouting became more frequent over time, as the boundaries tightened on what John found acceptable. Rather than cross the line, Sherlock watched the line cross him, and wondered why John expected better.

Aware but irreverent of the changing rules, Sherlock stood his ground. There came a point, however, that his bedrock began to fracture. It started when John kissed him, in the middle of an argument.

The most intimate thing about the kiss wasn't the press of lips, it was John pulling him forward with gentle firmness, as if afraid Sherlock would pull away. His hand had been so warm it nearly burned, but there was no sign of a tremor.

Despite his inexperience, Sherlock knew it was unusual for John to have his eyes open the entire time. Far from being a problem, the intensity of his stare was rather flattering. Much more troubling to Sherlock was that his own eyes had closed. The moment before they did, though, a shift of John's sleeve revealed a bizarre tattoo.

John was still there when Sherlock opened his eyes again. The touch had lingered, but eventually John pulled away. He treated Sherlock differently after that, became vastly more accommodating. From that one touch (two touches? The hand seemed so significant) the tension between them had softened into something else entirely.

Life was different after that. Undeniably it was sentiment, but everything seemed new, improved. The realm of possibilities had expanded, deductions were fueled by more and more improbable leaps of logic; a brightness had suffused Sherlock's life, through the light-conducting John Watson.

Sherlock was entirely capable of taking his clothes off, but the unspoken rules of growing intimacy meant that John was undressing him slowly, as Sherlock returned the favor. It was what people did, wasn't it? Take care of each other in objectively insignificant ways? But significance had grown to span the gulf between them like a spider's web: slowly, naturally, and with unexpected strength.

They were in front of the fireplace, regardless of clichés when Sherlock tasted John's scar. It didn't taste right. The taste was a cacophony of words like loyal and dangerous and John, and that wasn't possible. The experience left Sherlock unsettled for days. Practically unmoored from his new, bright reality. It was impossible that John's scar tasted like words, and yet it did. How?

One sour note, just discordant enough to spoil everything. He could ignore John's disappearing tattoos, his own convenient lack of hunger and fatigue, and even the fact that London hadn't seen a drop of rain in a long, long time, but Sherlock couldn't bear the fact that his thoughts had clearly stopped being his own; it was a mutiny, a madness that didn't come from a needle, and it was singularly intolerable. If Sherlock had wanted to go insane, he'd have done it himself.

The mind palace was empty of people when Sherlock decided to visit it. Mycroft, as tall and imposing as he'd seemed in Sherlock's childhood, was missing from their parents' kitchen. Molly was absent from the morgue. Even John was gone from his place in imaginary Baker Street. Unbidden, a line of reasoning formed: They've all gone home. Re-emerging to whatever passed for reality, Sherlock heard the door to the flat open, but didn't see John enter, from his sprawl on the couch. Was John missing from the palace because he was here, in the flat? No, that John was imaginary.

John, real John, approached the couch to say something, but whatever had been on Sherlock's face must have changed his mind. Sherlock mentally scolded himself for letting the expression slip, the one old-real-John (pre-kiss-John?) used to say wasn't appropriate to turn on widows or children; the face that said 'you're full of secrets, and I'd gladly skin you alive to find them.' New-real-John didn't care when he used it on other people, but apparently took it being turned his way as a sign that Sherlock wasn't in the mood to hear about his day.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-Hounds-of-Baskerville

John Watson, thankfully, had a backup plan. He'd hoped not to have to use it, he'd hoped he could keep up the charade of humanity a little longer, maybe long enough that Sherlock could eventually be trusted with the whole Djinn thing. It was practically a shock when John realized Sherlock didn't have even a passing interest-- or even a belief-- in the supernatural. Of course, he hadn't expected the man to be a hunter or anything. Quite the opposite.

John was somewhat embarrassed, looking back, but he'd assumed that maybe some ancestor of the Holmeses had got a little bit too familiar with... something. When he'd asked Sherlock if he ever got a certain kind of undefinable hunch about what someone was about to do-- the hallmark of a recessive telepath-- Sherlock gave him such a withering look that he didn't bother asking any more questions about it.

John had done his best with 'plan A', had suffused himself into Sherlock's life deeply enough that it would be hard for the git to reject John even if he'd grown devil horns and a spade-tip tail. Cleaning the flat, paying the bills, re-arranging his own life to fit exactly what was necessary to keep Sherlock alive. Enabling, supporting, protecting, but always with the guise of a 'human' type of empathy. The kind Sherlock ironically claimed to lack. Sherlock had called John a conductor of light, the carefully laid plan had looked almost impossible to stop...

But then the bastard had to go and experiment on him, and that just wasn't on. Sherlock took John's anger over the attempted drugging at face value-- betrayal, embarrassment over PTSD, the violation of rather a lot of laws. Sherlock may have thought the revenge would be limited to either a physical fight or a permeant separation, but what he didn't know was that he'd gone and ruined what could have been the best gift a scientist could have asked for, he'd ruined his chance at discovery, and the smug satisfaction of knowing something nobody else knew. John had been working up the courage to share his secret, but Sherlock had nearly stole it before he was ready.

It hadn't been a shotgun and a salt shaker, but it sent the alarm bells ringing all the same. Not all hunters do it for the meat or the fur. Some of them-- John remembered some blurry scene he saw from a broken window-- some of them catch owls just to mark them with some kind of device, and then set them free. And when those birds went home, the... scientist, would use the device to track down the nest, and move it somewhere else. Dozens of owls, one year, when he was small. Nobody ever asked if they'd wanted the nests moved.

Sherlock wasn't a hunter, but he was a scientist, and had to be... dealt with.

It was so easy, watching him succumb. A bit satisfying, really. Like one of those undercover-style TV shows where someone takes off a costume to reveal they're the one in charge. John was quite proud of his 'kiss of death' method, it was a lot less trouble than trying to attack someone like a rabid dog.

Other Djinns had told him the trick was a bit tacky, but he had a feeling what they meant was that it wasn't fair. As if life was some big Aesop with a lesson at the end like don't be rude nosy, Sherlock, but if the self-declared only consulting detective in the world couldn't pick up on the plot than it wasn't really very good at teaching, was it; no, this was the only way this could have ended, he knew it from the start in the itch below his skin--

The long sleeves of his jumper mostly hid the shine of John's tattoos as they spread up his arm, but at the last moment, Sherlock seemed to notice the ones climbing John's wrist once they'd gotten to be an inch from his eyeball. Bully for him, thought John, but Sherlock still fell unconscious like a stack of bricks a second later.


End file.
